Bill O’Reilly announced “the first salvo” in the “ongoing war on Christmas” last night. Get ready for 41 more days of O’Reilly and Fox using Jesus as an excuse to demonize and divide more than usual. Ho, ho, ho.
This particular “opening salvo” comes to us via the Muslims. O’Reilly announced:
In Montgomery County, Maryland, there will be no mention of Christmas or any other religious holiday on the school calendars going forward. That’s because a Muslim did something!
Fox News reporter Molly Line explained that Muslim community leaders have been asking for “equal billing for their two major Muslim holidays.” This is, apparently, a super big deal to Fox. Our Priscilla posted about a discussion on the same issue on Fox & Friends.
“So they wanted to have equal status with Christmas, Hannukah, Passover.” O’Reilly said, his voice dripping with Christmas contempt. “But there aren’t nearly as many Muslim kids in the schools in Montgomery County, Maryland as there are Jewish or Christian kids. Is that correct?”
Yes, but the Muslim population is growing, Line told him.
O’Reilly magnanimously granted Muslims permission “to put your little holiday” on the calendar. “But you’re not gettin’ off. Because if I give you off, then I have to give Halloween to Wiccans, right?”
O’Reilly insisted his opposition was based on statistics. “I’m not besmirching the Muslim religion,” he said. “It’s a public school and …the public is primarily Chistian and Jewish, not Muslim.”
He didn’t mention how many Muslims would be enough to merit a day off for their holidays. However, O’Reilly did let slip some animosity when he said that the county had “caved in” to the “pressure group” of Muslims seeking the recognition of their holidays. "They’re wiping out - you know Christmas and Easter and Passover, these have a Judeo-Christian tradition in our country. So they just wiped out all our traditions because these people – "
O’Reilly seemed to catch himself. He continued, “But I will say, I would have been respectful and put it on the calendar but you’re not getting off.”
Happy Xmas (War Is Not Over). Watch it below, via Media Matters.
Or is this just another case of IOKIYAR (because we know you’re really a Republican at heart, BOR)?
I blame Captain Planet for them even having the ideas they do, that’s the only place I saw the ideas they’re spouting.
That said, here’s a semi-quick fact for O’Reilly, and all the other Fox News talking heads: Every actual war on Christmas outside of the pagans who didn’t like their celebrations being hijacked was waged by Overzealous Christophiliacs. To provide a short list of examples:
The Pigrims banned Christmas for being “too Pagan” in the early colonies, as well as everywhere they managed to get into power back in Europe.
When Boston’s city government was headed by Angelicans, they banned it as a middle finger to other denominations.
British industrialist used anti-Christmas Zealots to forbid celebrations because they wanted their workers sober, and not taking holidays… Until Charles Dickens shamed them into stopping with “A Christmas Carol.”
A decade after Dickens saved Christmas, a Scottish Minister named Alexander Hislop made up a War on Christmas supposedly being waged by Roman Catholics, in order to monger hate against them.
The Birchers created a War on Christmas, and falsely pinned it on Atheists and their critics- Including that they made it a justification for their vendetta against author CS Lewis.
Fundamentalist nutjobs Pat Robertson and Jack Chick used so-called attacks on Christian holidays in their red scare tactics, as well as in their slanders of the anti-war movement. They even invoked Hislop to use his manifestos claim that Christmas would be the first to fall.
Moral Majority- Need I say more? Oddly enough, their hammering in of this crap was one of their more subtly delivered talking points. Which is kinda alarming, considering that this was the plot of every holiday special produced by a Christian studio at the time.
And O’Reilly and Peter Brimelow were spouting the current rewrite of this crap around the time we first got a Fox News to repeat it. I’m surprised the tradition didn’t start under the Clinton administration.
Seriously, be sure to let them know about that this year. It might shut it down a little.
If rightwingnuts can use the annual recurrence of winter weather to justify their claim that there’s no global warming, why can’t they use the annual recurrence of the Christmas Holiday to justify the fact that there’s no “war on Christmas”?
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’Nuff said.
